austria

VIENNA, May 11 – An Austrian court jailed a Syrian asylum seeker for life for murdering 20 wounded soldiers of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s army while fighting alongside an anti-Assad militia near the city of Homs, a court spokesman said. An interpreter had told the court the 27-year-old man recounted the episode to him in

By Krisztina Than and Francois Murphy VAMOSSZABADI, Hungary/NICKELSDORF, Austria, Sept 6 – On a warm morning in late August, two dozen migrants carrying stuffed plastic bags and backpacks boarded a bus outside a refugee centre in Vamosszabadi, a village in northwest Hungary. Escorted by police on what was meant to be a short shopping trip

VIENNA, Aug 30 – Austria has taken its next step, albeit small, towards introducing tougher rules on immigration that will allow it to turn away asylum seekers at its borders within an hour and also to cap the number of asylum requests it accepts. The government said on Tuesday it would start next week to

VIENNA, Aug 15 – Nine Iraqi asylum seekers and refugees have been arrested over the alleged gang rape of a 28-year-old German woman in Vienna on New Year’s Day, Austrian police said on Monday, a case likely to fuel public debate over immigration and crime. Austria has not seen scenes like those in the German

VIENNA, Aug 15 – Two suspects have been arrested in connection with an attempt to set fire to a Turkish cultural centre in the northern Austrian town of Wels, police said on Monday, at a time of heightened tension between Vienna and Ankara. The attack took place in early morning and the suspects, whom police

ISTANBUL, Aug 14 – Turkey summoned Austria’s charge d’affaires in Ankara late on Saturday over what it said was “indecent report” about Turkey on a news ticker at Vienna airport, a foreign ministry official said. “Turkey allows sex with children under the age of 15,” read a headline on an electronic news ticker at the

VIENNA, Aug 7 – Austria’s foreign minister has threatened to block the expansion of negotiations with Turkey on its accession to the European Union, which could scupper a landmark migration deal between Brussels and Ankara. Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz’s comments, published on Sunday, risk exacerbating a row between Austria and Turkey that flared last week

VIENNA, Aug 6 – Turkey’s failed coup and President Tayyip Erdogan’s subsequent purges of state institutions are reminiscent of the Reichstag fire in Nazi Germany and its use by Hitler to amass greater power, the head of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party said. The blaze in the German parliament building in 1933 was portrayed by the

VIENNA, May 2 – Austria saw a sharp increase last year in the number of incidents involving xenophobia, Islamophobia and anti-semitism, a report showed on Monday, following the arrival of large numbers of mostly Muslim migrants and refugees. Authorities pressed charges in about 1,690 cases related to right-wing extremism in 2015, the highest number to

By Shadia Nasralla VIENNA, Feb 23 – Vienna, Austria’s grand capital on the Danube river, offers the highest quality of life of all cities in the world, while the Iraqi capital Baghdad, once more took its place at the bottom of a liveability list compiled by consulting firm Mercer. The survey of 230 cities helps